


broken, broken

by TheBookDinosaur



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: HPFT, PTSD, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:32:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6500944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBookDinosaur/pseuds/TheBookDinosaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the War, most people start to rebuild. They put themselves back together.</p><p>The Slytherins aren't "most people." They're all falling apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this story deals with PTSD and trauma which happened in the aftermath of the second wizarding war; if you feel like these subjects might trigger you, feel free to hit the back button, or please proceed with caution.

_broken, broken_

Hogwarts is mended over the summer, the concentrated efforts of almost every capable witch and wizard going into rebuilding the walls and refurnishing the castle. Getting everything back into working order. Daphne spends her summer doing the opposite; sitting in her room, watching her hands growing paler and paler, trying to hold that cracks of her soul in place. Nobody mentions it, but neither she nor Astoria go out at all throughout the long summer months.

“You're going back to Hogwarts,” Antonia says over dinner one night. Daphne freezes in the act of raising her fork to her mouth, praying that her mother is talking to Astoria only. Antonia seems to sense her daughter's reticence and sends a sharp look her way. “That means you too, Daphne.”

“I – surely I don't need to,” Daphne says weakly. Suddenly her already tremulous appetite disappears and she places her fork down, swallows hard. “I've done Seventh Year already.” Astoria sends her a sympathetic look across the dinner table, and Daphne jerks her head like she's getting rid of a fly. She doesn't know if she can handle going back.

“Yes, you do,” Antonia says firmly. “That Seventh Year was a sham and you know it. Besides,” she says, “it makes us look better if you at least make a show of admitting you were on the wrong side. Going back the Hogwarts helps with that.” Daphne opens her mouth to protest, looks at her father for help. He doesn't meet her eyes, and her mouth closes as she slumps over the dinner table. “I've written to McGonagall, and she agreed to letting you repeat Seventh Year,” Antonia says, brown eyes sharp. Daphne doesn't meet them.

“Sure,” she says flatly. “Okay.”

~*~

Daphne pretends not to notice how everyone on Platform Nine and Three-Quarters cuts a stern circle around them, as though they have a disease which can be contracted if they come too close. Astoria clutches her hand tightly and glares around at everyone until Daphne steps on her foot and hisses, “Stop looking so _angry_ ,” in her ear. Astoria loses the grimace and tries out a smile that looks positively painful.

“They weren't the ones suffering in school!” Astoria bursts out passionately once they've found a compartment of their own (the two third-years who had been inside it had scurried out as soon as they'd seen the Slytherin ties Astoria and Daphne were wearing. “I mean, I guess they were, but they weren't the ones who had to deal with the guilt of _torturing other students_ and having your family in _constant danger_ and they weren't the ones who had _no fucking choice_ because everything you do has an effect on your _family_. They have _no idea_ –”

“You sound like everybody's idea of an overdramatic teenager,” Daphne says, cutting her off abruptly. “Every adult's worst nightmare.” Astoria turns to her, incensed.

“Are you saying I'm _wrong_?” she asks incredulously. “You _agree_ with them? You would trivialise what we went through?”

“No,” Daphne says, “of course not.” She can feel the familiar blankness that she had conditioned herself to feel instead of anger. “But you need to stop being so emotional. As long as you talk like that – nobody's going to listen to you. You'll be too crazy, too sad, too much of a Slytherin to listen to.”

Astoria simmers for a moment, anger clear on her features, before she sits down and folds her arms so tightly Daphne thinks they might break. Her little sister is too much emotion for such a small body.

“You could speak out,” she says at last, and Daphne's glad to hear the forced calm in Astoria's voice. Her sister has always been able to control herself better than Daphne gave her credit for. “You and the other Seventh Years – you're all adults, you could tell people what it was like.”

“We're only just of age and we're not detached enough,” Daphne says, tired. “We're just going to sound like overdramatic students trying to get some attention, you know that.” Astoria, stays silent, but the frown on her face deepens and the muscles in her arms tighten.

The door slides open and Pansy and Millicent slide in, leaning back against the wall gratefully. Millicent nods at Daphne, who gives her a small smile in return.

“Hey, Daphne,” Pansy says in a small voice. Nobody needs any explanation to know that she's probably the one being criticised the most for That Moment before the Battle started.

“Hey, Pansy,” Daphne says gently, opening her arms. Pansy's face crumples a little, and she walks into her friend's embrace without another word.

~*~

Every single stone in Hogwarts has a memory etched in it. Even the new ones, glaringly light grey against the darker colours of the original tiles, seem to be there purely to remind Daphne of everything she did to cause this. _It's not your fault_ , she tells Pansy, clutching her friend's hand tightly, and Pansy repeats the sentiment back at her, but she doesn't think either of them believe it. Millicent doesn't spend much time in the common room at all. Daphne doesn't know where she hides out, but she does know that Millicent is hardly ever seen by anyone outside of lessons.

Everything takes a turn for the worse when the Ministry announce their new initiative: as a part of the War Recovery program they're going to be looking at the cases of Unforgivable Spells cast in Hogwarts, with a focus on those who turned of age during the school year.

It's Astoria who shows her the news, eyes darting around as though someone might come to snatch her from Hogwarts at any time. Daphne puts an arm around her in wordless reassurance, and Astoria leans into her for comfort as she did when they were children being haunted by the monster under the bed. “Here,” she murmurs, showing Daphne the paper.

Daphne scans the article, lets out a breath. Astoria curls into her more. “Oh,” Daphne says, and, well, that's all she can think to say, really. Oh.

“Daphne?” Astoria asks tentatively, putting her small cold hand on top of Daphne's. “Are you – I mean, are you okay?” Her eyes are anxious and her body seems so small and fragile as she looks desperately at her older sister for any sort of comfort. Daphne takes another look at the paper before putting it aside carefully enough that it barely makes a noise as she sets it on one of the tables before sitting up.

“They need someone to blame,” she says. The blankness that she had used so often as her coping mechanism last year comes rushing back, almost comfortable in its empty familiarity. “Most of the Death Eaters are in prison, so this is logical, I suppose. Don't worry,” she says, twisting her face into something she hopes looks like a smile (it's been so long since she's properly, actually smiled that she barely remembers what it feels like). “You should be safe, you're still underage, aren't you?”

“But you aren't,” Astoria whispers, and her face is so broken and worried that Daphne folds her into her arms, going through the motions of a hug and hoping that it's vaguely comforting for Astoria. “I don't _understand_ ,” Astoria whispers brokenly into Daphne's neck, words whispering against pale skin before disappearing into the cold air of the common room. “You were being tortured, too – your entire family was under threat – you were under the Imperius Curse half the time!”

“I know,” Daphne whispers helplessly, drawing useless patterns on the smooth back of Astoria's robes, long nails scratching the fabric slightly. The green fire crackles in the grate and Daphne is folded in her sister's arms, but the common room has never seemed colder than it is now.

~*~

“Oh my _god_ ,” Pansy says when Daphne brings the paper up to show her the news. “Oh my _god_ ,” she says again, voice cracking desperately. Her face crumples, and her breath comes faster. “Oh my god they're going to find me guilty, aren't they? I'm, I'm going to be sent to Azkaban I'm going to be an _example_ ,” she presses her face to her hands, her back heaving with dry sobs. “Everybody hates the fucking _Slytherins_ , they're going to send me to Azkaban and I'm not going to have a fair trial –”

She breaks off to scream, and sinks to the floor to cover her face. Daphne can see the sheen of sweat on her face, she can see the way that Pansy's gasping as though she's underwater and drowning.

“Pansy?” she asks. “Pansy, can you hear me?” Pansy's shivering, now, and Daphne takes a blanket off the bed to wrap around her. “Pansy, listen to me,” she says firmly, taking her friend's wrists and making eye contact. “It's going to be okay. You're going to be fine.”

“It's – it's _not_!” Pansy gasps, and the sheer panic that shines behind the tears in her eyes is almost enough to make Daphne recoil. “They're going to send us all to Azkaban, you know that, they need a scapegoat and we're fucking perfect for the job, and, and, I bet we're not going to be allowed a defence lawyer or witness or whatever the fuck else you're supposed to be allowed to have in a court of law like, oh, I don't know, a _fair trial_ –”

“Just stay with me, Pansy,” Daphne says urgently, trying to rub some warmth back into her friend's hands and giving up almost before she starts. “Just, I don't know, breathe. Okay? Breathe with me.”

Daphne can't tell how long they stay there, like that, joined by their hands and breathing together, in through the nose and out through the mouth, purposely making their breaths as loud as possible as slowly Pansy gets herself in sync with Daphne.

“You okay?” Daphne asks finally, wrapping herself in the blanket with Pansy, tucking the corners in so that they're in a blanket roll of their own. Pansy nods, and clutches Daphne tightly.

“I'm sorry,” she breathes, and puts her cold toes on Daphne's legs, managing a watery laugh as Daphne jumps and squeaks at the sudden coldness.

“Don't be,” she replies easily. “There's nothing to be sorry about.”

“Let's do something stupid,” Pansy says, sitting up and reaching for the newspaper. “Let's rip this up and throw it in the fireplace.”

“Done,” Daphne says, and they manage to flail out of their blanket fort to run down to the common room, leaning on each other and ripping _The Daily Prophet_ into small pieces which turn into smaller pieces, throwing them into the fireplace like confetti and watching in vindictive pleasure as the edges of the pieces of newspaper start to curl before the whole thing goes up in flames.

Both of them know that it's not the newspaper's fault that everything's going to shit and burning the article won't make it untrue. It's just that they need something to blame, something to rip and tear and rage against and break. It's either the newspaper or themselves, Daphne thinks.

~*~

That night, she dreams of light flashing, grey stones lit green for a brief second before someone else falls to the spell. She hears maniacal laughter and a high, haunting voice. _Give me Harry Potter_. How can one boy be worth more than a school full of children?

She relives the Battle a thousand times – sometimes she's there, fighting. Sometimes she dies. Sometimes she's waiting in the forest, alone, with a roiling stomach that feels as though it wants to claw its way up her throat.

She opens her eyes and morning light suffuses the dormitory.

When she steps out of bed, the floor gives under her feet. When she looks down, she almost doesn't recognise the rotted corpse of a body she's stepped on, except for the voice in the corner of the room – that same high, cold voice which told her to _give me Harry Potter_.

“It's you,” the voice says, sounding amused. “That's you, in your true form. Can you see your heart?”

She doesn't want to, she doesn't want to see, but she some outside force turns her head downwards until she's looking at her own rotting body. Next to her foot is a pulsating black thing, shrivelled and ruined.

“I don't think you're worth stepping on, even,” the voice says from the corner.

That's when Daphne really wakes up, her hands flying and legs tangled in her blanket.

~*~

“They're called panic attacks,” Millicent says when Daphne tells her what happened to Pansy in the dormitory. Millicent had been in the back of the library when Daphne had come in to research what could have been happening to Pansy – and more importantly, how she could help – and she hadn't heard the news about rounding up Seventh-Year Slytherins. “My mum told me she used to get them, during the first war.”

“Did she tell you how to get them to stop?” Daphne asks hopefully, and Millicent shrugs.

“I think they go away naturally,” she says. “Once you've overcome your anxiety. What you did sounds pretty similar to what she said her friend did for her – but don't trust me, I don't know much.” Daphne nods, and turns back to the bookshelves.

“If you ever want to talk,” she says when she's done looking, clutching a handful of books to look over, “you know. You can – talk to me. Or something.” Millicent gives her a tiny smile, and Daphne takes that as her cue to leave.

~*~

That night, Pansy crawls into Daphne's bed with a whispered apology. “I can't sleep,” she whispers a confession that the darkness swallows without another sound.

“It's okay,” Daphne says, pushing down pity both because Pansy wouldn't want it and because she doesn't want to feel it. She takes Pansy's hand mostly out of a hope that it'll comfort her, and it seems to work because Pansy curls up against Daphne and her breathing evens out within minutes.

That's also the night she realises that despite the nightmares, she doesn't move in her sleep enough to disturb Pansy, even when she flails awake desperately, sitting up and putting her head between her knees because she feels so much safer curled into the confines of her own body. Pansy just mumbles something and turns over.

She's still sweating a little bit as she pulls the cover back over her and stares up into the darkness.

She's drowning, honestly.

~*~

The war doesn't just affect the Seventh-Year Slytherins. It actually hurt, sometimes, when Daphne was sitting in the Great Hall watching her housemates. The changes were small barely noticeable unless you were watching, but there all the same.

The way that they never opened doors any more, but simply pushed them until they could slide in quietly in the hopes of not attracting any attention. How some Slytherins would slide into lessons late with hospital slips in their hands, or the way Slytherins now preferred to check books out of the library and bring them back to the Common Room rather than study in the library itself.

It hurts most of all when Daphne watches Astoria; the way her delicate shoulders curve downwards now, the way she forces herself not to flinch when someone around her moves suddenly, the way she seeks out a lot more contact with Daphne now just because she's always been a tactile person and now she doesn't really touch her classmates often.

~*~

Daphne withdraws further into herself, and yeah, she knows it's wrong to depend so heavily on having no feelings to cope – that doesn't sound remotely healthy even in her head, damn it – but the entirety of Slytherin house just seems to be constantly on the brink of collapse. Draco doesn't respond to anything anyone says to him. Millicent keeps up her disappearing act. Pansy's panic attacks get more frequent and more prolonged despite Daphne's best efforts and desperate iterations of, “Breathe, just, oh my god, Pansy, please listen to me, just breathe with me.” She thinks it probably isn't a good thing to try and stop a panic attack when you're panicking yourself. She forces herself to look at her housemates and think of all their worst traits in an attempt to disassociate herself from reality.

Gregory clenches his fists so tightly to avoid hitting back when the other students taunt him that his short nails break the skin and bloody half-moons appear on his palms every other day no matter how often he or Draco heal them.

“Please don't,” she hears Draco say to Gregory one night clutching his hand tightly and with more vulnerability in his voice and face than Daphne's ever seen before. “Just – I can't lose you too.”

She gets up a little too abruptly and walks upstairs. When she sits down on her bed, her hands are shaking and she tries her best to ignore it. If she ignores it pointedly enough, it'll go away or she'll forget about it, which is pretty much the same thing.

She wanted this. She _wanted_ to not be able to feel anything for other people, just like they all say Slytherins can't feel. And yeah, she doesn't really care about Gregory and his newfound proclivity for digging his fingernails into his skin.

So why is she so damn _scared_ of it?

Blaise brews Calming Potion in the boys' dormitory and gives them out to any of the Slytherins who ask. Daphne laughs when he offers her one and says dryly that she has things sorted out for now, but she'll come to him if she ever feels like a bit of a pick-me-up. Blaise nods and looks almost ready to laugh.

“You're handling this the best of us all,” he says seriously, reaching put to squeeze her arm. She gives him a weak smile that he probably doesn't notice and then slumps against the wall as he leaves.

The best out of all of them. She wishes.

~*~

 _Dear Mother_ , she writes home one day.

 _I'm sure you've heard about the Ministry's plan to seek justice for the students who were wronged in Hogwarts last year._ She pauses, bites her lip and tries to start the next sentence. _I was wondering_ , she starts to write, and then scribbles it out because if anyone reads the mail they might accuse her of conspiring against the Ministry.

 _If you have any advice I would be glad to hear it_ , she writes in the end, and somehow she still doesn't think it's enough but that's what she sends off anyway.

~*~

 _Dearest Daphne_ , her mother writes back barely a day later, using a clever enchantment to disguise the letter as a magazine to anyone who isn't Daphne.

 _I was sorry to hear about the Ministry's new initiative_ , Daphne reads, and almost snorts. _I hope that you're coping adequately in Slytherin._ This time she really does snort out loud. _I'm aware that this must be a truly terrible time for you and your housemates, but I do encourage you to focus on your N.E.W.Ts. As you well know, these exams are of the utmost importance to your future and career after Hogwarts._

_With love,  
Antonia_

Daphne stares at the letter in disbelief and taps it with her wand desperately.

“You must be kidding me,” she says at the letter. “Please be kidding me.” How could her mother worry about N.E.W.Ts when the prospect of being locked up in _Azkaban_ was becoming threateningly real?

The tap of the wand must have triggered something in the letter, though, because suddenly it expanded and more of her mother's beautiful handwriting appeared down at the bottom.

_If the Ministry truly do go through with this ridiculous new program of theirs, your father tells me to pass onto you that he still has contacts with the Azkaban guards. However, if it comes to that I think that before they can arrest you I will do my best to spirit you away, and you have my express permission to immigrate if you can. Your sister should be safe enough for now. Rapelles-tu ton français?_

Daphne reads the last three sentences, and then she reads them again, and almost cracks her dry lips as she smiles.

~*~

“Daphne Greengrass?” a small voice asks from behind her, and Daphne pulls her head off the table with a monumental effort to look around at the third year who's standing behind nervously, twisting his hands and blinking too often.

“Hello?”

“Um. Professor McGonagall wants to, um, see you. And,” here he pauses, frowning with the effort of trying to remember something, “Pansy Parkinson. She wants to see you both in her office.”

“Now?” Daphne asks, wondering what she might have done wrong. Somehow she can't really dredge up a reaction, although she knows she should probably be feeling at least slightly apprehensive. The kid shrugs nervously, tugging his sleeves down.

“She didn't say,” he says nervously, shuffling his feet a little. Daphne nods, thanks him. He almost runs away from her, and she gets up to find Pansy, who ends up being in her dormitory, staring blankly at a half-done essay.

“Hey, Pansy” Daphne says, sitting down on the edge of her bed. Pansy looks up, her mouth open to probably say something about not wanting to do any more writing before she closes it again at the sight of Daphne's face.

“What? What is it?”

“Professor McGonagall wants to see us,” Daphne says quietly. Pansy's head flops down into the bed, creasing her essay and almost toppling over the inkpot, which Daphne moves to the bedside table.

“Who told you?” she asks. Her voice is trembling, and her eyes are welling up. “Oh my God, it's the Ministry, isn't it? They've come to take us away, haven't they? I don't – so many things they could convict us for – we're going to Azkaban!” she exclaims, breaking off to laugh. Her laughter turns to tears in seconds and she's sobbing on the bed. “Oh my God,” she says again through her sobs before heading off into incoherency.

Daphne feels an unfamiliar surge of annoyance and has to stifle the urge to roll her eyes before moving to comfort Pansy – and, oh god, she's turning into some kind of robot, isn't she? She can't empathise with the girl that she calls her _best friend_ , what's happening to her?

~*~

“Have either of you girls seen Millient Bulstrode recently?” Professor McGonagall asks impatiently, the end of her quill tapping against her desk.

“Millie – no, no I haven't,” Daphne stutters, and looks to Pansy for agreement. “I mean – I don't have many lessons with her –”

“She keeps to herself,” Pansy says helpfully. It had taken Daphne almost half an hour to calm them both down and get the two of them presentable. If she's using a bit of a charm on the bags under her eyes, well, nobody needs to know. If Professor McGonagall was annoyed by their lateness, she didn't show it. “She's hardly ever in the common room.”

“I see,” Professor McGonagall says, sounding tired. Daphne can see Pansy's fists clench under the table, and reaches out as subtly as she can to place a hand gently on her arm. “Well, if either of you girls see her, please let me know. I'll have to bring in the Ministry if she doesn't turn up.” Daphne nods and Pansy immediately stands up to leave with a small, tight smile at Professor McGonagall. Daphne rather thinks that the only way she can make it clearer that she wants to get out is if she starts shouting it from the rooftops, but offers a similar smile towards Professor McGonagall and hurries out after her.

“Are you okay?” she asks immediately as they leave the Headmistress' Office and return to the more ordinary stone halls. “You want to go outside?” Pansy shakes her head, and, mid-shake, changes her mind and nods.

“Yeah. Yeah, if you don't mind. Thanks,” she says, and Daphne puts an arm around her to guide them both outside. “I need to show you something, anyway.”

They walk outside the castle, pretending not to see Filch's suspicious glaring, and Pansy takes her hand and leads her to the memorials that were erected near the Black Lake, near Dumbledore's marble tomb.

“That always seemed weird to me,” Pansy says as they walk, and Daphne's suddenly, wildly grateful that she's broken the silence between them. The leaves rustling from the other side of the lake is too quiet. “Putting someone in marble, I mean. Letting their body rot.” Daphne's mind goes back to her nightmares, where she steps through her own dead body getting out of bed. “What do they say in the funeral services? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? From the earth he came and to the earth he'll return? Putting him in a stone box isn't returning him to the earth.”

“Unnatural, you mean?” Daphne asks, looking at Dumbledore's tomb more keenly. “I guess you're right.”

“Doesn't matter,” Pansy says, “we're here. I saw Millie come here yesterday, from the library window.” When Daphne turns her head, she sees the massive grey stone that serves as a centrepiece in front of her, with the names of all the people who had died during the war engraved on it. “Look,” Pansy says, pointing when Daphne doesn't immediately react. “On the ground.”

On the smooth grass in front of the Memorial Stone, Daphne sees what she thinks is a stick, broken in half. Then she sees the carvings on the handle, and realisation hits her like a train.

It's a snapped wand. It's _Millicent_ 's snapped wand.

Daphne feels as though she might throw up.

~*~

“Mum wrote me about the Ministry thing,” Daphne says when she and Astoria are in front of the fireplace. The noise of Astoria's quill abruptly stops as she looks up.

“Really? What did she say?”

“She said – um, she said I could leave the country, if I wanted.”

“You mean,” Astoria pauses, incredulity filling her features. “You mean become a _fugitive_?” To her credit, she manages to sound disbelieving and stay quiet at the same time. Daphne hadn't thought about it in that context, and says so. “Well, you're running from the law, right?”

“Well, yeah, but they haven't announced definitely that they're going to arrest anyone,” Daphne says. “So I don't think it's running from the law, exactly. Just, um, premature precautionary measures?” It comes out sounding more like a question than a statement.

“Run where, exactly?” Astoria asks, sceptical.

“France,” Daphne says, and Astoria sits quietly at this.

“I didn't think Mum had any family in France,” she says at last.

“I don't think she does either,” Daphne says, “or if she does she didn't mention it. But it makes sense. Most of the Ministry are so properly English that they probably can't imagine anyone being fluent enough in a second language to live in a foreign country.”

“That is actually true,” Astoria says, and smiles. It fades quickly though, and her hand twitches on her lap as though it wants to reach out and touch Daphne somehow. “I'd miss you,” she says quietly. “If you went.”

Daphne doesn't know whether she'd miss her sister; could she compartmentalise that emotion as she does all the others? The answer is probably yes, and that actually scares her a little; either way though, she reaches out and says, “I'd miss you too.” Astoria looks at her hand, takes it and pulls her into a hug.

“It's probably a good idea to go though,” she says in the manner of a person who doesn't want what they're saying to be true. “Before they put out arrest warrants or whatever.” Daphne can feel her sister's voice echo through her chest and into Daphne's own; she pretends that it's her heart, vibrating at the thought of leaving England.

 _You wanted this_ , she reminds herself for the millionth time. _It's easier not to get hurt_. She thinks of the comments thrown her way during classes and in the corridors, the derogatory things that the other houses shout during Qudditch matches in the name of house spirit, and thinks, yes, this was the right thing to do.

~*~

“I think I might be leaving,” Daphne says the next morning when the two of them have just woken up. The words come out much more easily than she'd hoped; everything is easy between them nowadays. Pansy turns her big brown eyes to meet Daphne's cool blue ones. Her hair is mussed and her eyes are soft, sleep having rounded off the sharp angles of her body.

“Leaving? Leaving – like Millicent? Leaving where?”

“Promise not to tell,” Daphne demands. Pansy nods, a promise easily given. “To France,” Daphne says quietly, starting to unbraid her hair. “Live there.”

“You speak French – yes, yes you do, I forgot,” Pansy says. “Wow. Because of the Ministry thing?” Daphne nods, fingers moving through her hair quickly. “That's smart,” Pansy says. “If they don't track you there, they probably won't even look for you there.” Daphne just nods again, running her fingers through her hair and starting to scrape it up into a ponytail. “Just – can you just Apparate to France?”

“No – well, technically, yes,” Daphne says as Pansy climbs into the bed. “But international Apparition is tracked by the International Wizarding Convention.”

“So how will you get there, then?” Pansy asks. The artificial light in the dormitory makes her face seem more shadowed than it is. “Portkeys are probably tracked, too.”

“I'm going to Apparate into the Channel,” Daphne says. “And carry a bag with an Undetectable Extension Charm on it, and a broomstick.”

“You're going to _fly_ into France,” Pansy says flatly. Daphne shrugs sheepishly, almost smiles at the incredulity that fills Pansy's face.

“The Channel's no-man's-land, nobody tracks Apparition there.”

“Well, how are you going to explain your presence to the French wizards, then?” Pansy demands. “They'll know something's up if you just appear, even if you change your name to –” she flails around for a bit before finally saying, “something French.”

Daphne shrugs again, watches her friend's face carefully. “I'm not going to,” she says deliberately.

Pansy frowns at this cryptic statement before Daphne's plan dawns on her. “No way,” she says. Daphne doesn't reply. “You're going to live as a _Muggle_.”

“It's the best way,” Daphne says.

“Oh my days,” Pansy says weakly. “One of them. You're going native.” Daphne actually snorts a laugh at that. “But – I mean – how will you live? Well, you'll be fine,” she says, more to herself that Daphne. “You've always been resourceful. I could never live with them, though.”

“Just think of it as keeping your skin safe,” Daphne says. The decision to, as Pansy said, 'go native' had been surprisingly easy for her, actually. Maybe because she didn't attach emotions to many things anymore, maybe because her Slytherin side came out and said that the end of staying safe would justify the means of living with Muggles.

~*~

Later that week, at the end of a school day, after Pansy skips Charms, Daphne goes looking for her; first in the dorms, then the library. She almost misses Pansy, who's curled up in a small alcove with a blanket covering her so that she looks like a pile of clothes rather than a person.

As she approaches, it becomes clear that something is wrong; there are harsh breaths coming out from underneath the blanket, gasps and half-sobs.

“Pansy?”

“Oh my god,” Pansy says miserably. She's wiping her red eyes desperately, taking deep breaths as Daphne approaches.

“Why didn't you call me?” Daphne asks, moving closer immediately, clasping Pansy's arm and trying not to wince as the other girl grabs her arm tightly enough that her knuckles turn white.

“I just –” Pansy gulps, takes a deep, steadying breath as Daphne hugs her close, knowing that contact is one of the things which calms Pansy down quickest. She's shuddering, and Daphne can feel her sweat from beneath the robes that she's wearing. “It came almost after last lesson,” Pansy says, pushing herself away from Daphne. “I kind of, just, wanted to see whether I could deal with it myself.”

“Oh, Pansy,” Daphne says. It's pretty much the worst thing she can do.

“Well, you're _leaving_ , aren't you?” Pansy hisses loudly at her. “What am I supposed to do then? I need to become more self-sufficient, and it's not – it's not working, and I'm just, I can't –” She's on the brink of tears again, pressing a hand to her mouth to try and muffle her harsh gasping. “I need to learn how to deal with these _myself_ like you deal with everything yourself, and I can't, I can't, I'm not as strong as you are, I can't –”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Daphne says, at a loss of knowing what else she can say, reaching out a hand. “You don't have to do it all yourself. You can ask Astoria for help, or Blaise, or Draco. Any of the Slytherins would be happy to help, Pansy.”

“I'm _weak_ ,” Pansy says with so much venom in her tone that it almost scares Daphne.

“Hush,” Daphne says. “You've been through so much.”

“So have you!” Pansy wails, but this only gets her a stern hushing noise from the librarian.

“Don't compare yourself to other people,” Daphne says, stroking Pansy's back until she stops shaking and her breaths start to finally, finally even out. “Okay?” Daphne asks, pulling back slightly to look into Pansy's face. Her eyes are red-rimmed and her mouth is turned down, and Daphne tries to tug one side up with her index finger. “Smile for me?” she asks.

Instead, Pansy grabs her wrist and tugs her down until their lips meet.

It's warm, and their lips fit together softly before pulling apart gently and meeting again. Daphne is suddenly aware of everything around her; the stacks of books, Pansy's eyelashes fluttering on her cheeks, their hands, cupping each another's faces.

“You're leaving,” Pansy whispers when they pull away from one another. From a logical perspective, Daphne knows she should pull away, but for the first time in a long while her feelings get the better of her and she stays bent over as she is, her forehead leaning against Pansy's.

“I know,” she whispers back. There's a long silence that stretches between them then, tinted golden and quiet like the library around them. Daphne tries to do some introspection but like always, she can't feel anything really. She doesn't even know if she enjoyed it, just knows that it was a nice kiss. “This isn't healthy,” Daphne says at last.

“Hmm?”

“We're both so broken,” she says, straightening up slightly, clasping Pansy's hands in her own. “We need to learn to live on our own first.” Pansy hesitates, and then nods.

“Okay,” she says, and that's that.


	2. Chapter 2

_broken, broken_

It's as she feared, it's as they all feared; Draco's taken out of school and put in a holding cell on the outskirts of Azkaban, forced to take to the stand in front of the Wizengamont, on trial for being a Death Eater at sixteen. They put him on trial for caving under duress, for doing what he thought was necessary – what might have been necessary, at the time – to protect himself and his family. They put him on trial for not holding up against the impossible pressure he was placed under; for not being the hero Harry Potter was.

In theory, Daphne thinks, Slytherin house should unite under the fear that’s pushing them together, or help each other against the animosity they’re all facing. Instead, the Slytherin Common Room turns into a place of small groups and scared whispers, fingernails digging into skin, tears hastily wiped off skin as though they’re made of acid. Daphne can’t remember the last time she heard her housemates laugh. You can’t help others when you’re as broken as they are.

“It's useless,” Theo says one evening, in front of the fire, glaring at the copy of the _Daily Prophet_ Blaise is holding. It’s hard to get warm, somehow, and everybody huddles around the fire, letting the flickering light cast broken, hunched shadows over the walls. “They're just going to put us all on trial. We don't need to follow Draco's – Malfoy's,” he corrects himself. “That’s like reading your own future.” Pansy starts to cry, and a couple of the Sixth Year girls follow her lead.

“Not necessarily,” Daphne says, putting an arm around Pansy and glaring at Theo – he merely raises his eyebrows, saying _what? They need to face the facts_. “The Ministry might just be hoping that by publicising this trial really well they won't need to follow up with anything else. People might be satisfied after the one really public trial.”

It goes on in this vein for a while, arguments being made and rehashed in the safety of the Common Room – “Shacklebolt's not one of the power politicians, he's in it to do what's right, and apparently this is what's right to him,” and “This might not even be driven by Shacklebolt, it might be those people in the Ministry with a vendetta, and he agreed to this if they let the others off the hook,” and “He can't just back out of investigating us, though, especially after he made it so public,” and circling back around to Daphne's original, and much beloved among the house, point, “Maybe he's only publicising it to satisfy everyone else! He can't think this is right!”

They make assumptions about the Minister's character, about the Minister's various adviser's characters, they hold the Prophet up as gospel or dismiss it as trash to suit their arguments. Ministry names echo through the Common Room; someone procures a list of the names of those on the Wizengamot and the higher-ups at the Minstry, and it takes a place on their wall, with red lines through the people who would probably be happy to go along with this new initiative.

The seventh-years tear the list down and throw it in the fire hopelessly when the red lines scratch through the majority of the names on the paper, and Blaise has taken to Flooing to Knockturn Alley every week to get the ingredients he needs to brew Calming Draught.

“I don't know how you're handling it so well, I really don't,” he says to Daphne, a slightly dopey grin stretched wide over his face after a dose of his own potion. “You're so –” he trails off, gestures at her with long sweeps of his arm, “– so _cool_ with everything, y'know?”

“You're drunk,” Daphne says flatly. He doesn't protest as she leads him to his bed and makes him lie down.

His newly brewed vials of Calming Draught lie on the bedside table next to him; her hand hovers over them for a moment, wondering, wondering – she couldn't do that to him. She knows about something called a placebo effect, where you think something has an effect on you and it does even if whatever you were taking was a fake. Madam Pomfrey had told her about it when she was still a wide-eyed second year hanging around the hospital, with a head full of dreams of helping people.

Her hand trembles slightly in the air before she pulls it back from the bottles of Calming Draught, and uses it to close the door behind her with an air of finality.

 _His coping mechanisms are his coping mechanisms_ , she thinks to herself firmly as she walks down the stairs. She has no right to mess with them. She should be glad that he's not reverting to actual alcohol, as she's heard that so many muggles do.

“They're unable to handle anything in their petty little lives,” Father had said while he was explaining alcohol to his daughters, blissfully unaware of the fact that they'd both had their first tastes of Butterbeer and Firewhiskey far before this speech. “So they revert to alcohol or drugs to help themselves forget, even for a while.” She hadn't understood, then, how on earth you could feel better forgetting about something important, even if it was a bad kind of important.

She can't believe how young she was, how young and arrogant and stupid; she would give anything to be able to forget all of this.

~*~

“Daphne, we need to talk,” Pansy says. They’re in the library again, which seems fitting, but today the sunlight is weaker and the dust motes swirling through the air are more obvious. Perhaps that’s only because Daphne’s paying attention to them. “Daphne, I’m serious,” Pansy says when Daphne doesn’t respond immediately. “You – we’ve been off, since –”

“I know,” Daphne says and Pansy looks up triumphantly.

“See? You don’t even want me to say it. We kissed, Daphne, we _kissed_ and now you’re being weird about it.” The stacks of books have never been more interesting to Daphne. She can see what looks like a first edition copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ on the third shelf above Pansy’s head.

“I’m not being weird,” she says eventually, and it’s a totally useless exercise in denial. “I just don’t know what to do, okay? I don’t know how to act, or talk, or – do anything, really.”

“Just be _normal_ ,” Pansy says pleadingly. “If you don't want to talk about it, we won't, alright? Simple as that. I miss you. You’ve hardly ever been around since yesterday and I already don’t like it.” She leans forward, and their faces are too close together. ( _Not close enough_ , Daphne’s treacherous mind thinks, and she tries to crush the thought before it can compel her into doing anything stupid.)

“I just want to know,” Daphne says slowly, “whether you kissed me because you wanted to, or because you wanted me to stay.”

Pansy’s silent, and Daphne wants to hear the answer in words.

“I don’t know,” Pansy says. Her voice is fragile, thinner than a strand of cobweb, and hangs between the two of them. “Both, maybe. Neither. Either.” Their faces are so close together, and all Daphne can think of is hooking her fingers underneath Pansy’s jaw. Her hand twitches, and she bends it into a soft fist. “Just – stay, please,” Pansy says, and her eyes are glittering. “Stay with me.”

Daphne doesn’t answer, and feels like the worst kind of coward; Pansy stands and leaves the library. Daphne stares at the first-edition copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ , and wonders how this chapter of history will be written.

~*~

Draco's trial seems to go on for ages, all sorts of people taking their turn to stand in front of the Wizengamot to testify for this or that side. Daphne can barely stand to see pictures of him, and tries her best to keep the papers away from Pansy; Draco's so skinny, and his cheeks have hollowed out, but it's his eyes that are the worst – grey and empty, staring out of the paper with no life left in them. The pictures of him which appear in the _Prophet_ look more Muggle than wizarding, he’s so still.

“Give them all a stone wall to talk to,” Theo says. He's practically vibrating, spitting the words out.

Daphne wraps her arm around a nearby first-year who's looking terrified, whispers in her ear, “People are just angry right now. Keep to yourself for a bit and hopefully it'll be over soon.” Astoria, sitting next to her, is the only one who can hear, and she raises her eyebrow at this because all of them know it won't be over any time soon – still, she reaches over to wrap this small girl's hand in her own.

Later, Daphne hears Theo's screaming from the boys' rooms on the opposite side of the hall and a sickening cracking noise followed by a muffled Healing incantation.

“Shut up, will you,” she can hear Blaise say, crass and irritated, and Daphne turns over in her bed, facing away from the door. _Their coping mechanisms are their coping mechanisms_ , she tells herself again. If he punched walls to alleviate stress, that wasn’t problem unless it threatened to bring the castle down around her ears, which she doubted it would. Theo was not that powerful; he was more likely to break himself than the castle walls. _You do not meddle in them_.

~*~

“I can't do it,” Pansy says, her eyes desperate after yet another group of other students passing by had taunted her with names: _coward, bitch, little snake_. Pansy was the most hated of them all because of her terrified outburst in the Great Hall. “Please, skip Charms with me – I can't –” She takes a deep breath, and Daphne can see the sudden sheen of sweat breaking out on her skin, the way she's fighting to keep her breathing measured.

“Okay,” she says, dragging Pansy down the corridor and slipping into a passageway behind a tapestry. “Do you want me to do anything?” she asks, trying to keep in mind that Pansy really does have to learn to manage these on her own. Pansy shakes her head, sits down, runs her fingers over the ground to reassure herself and tries to control her breathing; Daphne sits opposite her, taking deep breaths, trying to create an example for Pansy to follow.

“I'll be okay,” Pansy says firmly to herself, eyes still closed. Daphne peeks out from behind the tapestry, and even though the corridor is empty she still takes the precaution of casting a Silencing Spell on the tapestry, so that hopefully no truanting passersby will hear anything. “I'm okay,” Pansy says again, after several deep breaths. “I'm okay. I'm alive, and I'm okay. I'll be okay because I'll make it okay.”

Daphne raises an eyebrow, wondering bleakly whether or not lying to yourself now would simply cause larger problems in the future. ( _It doesn’t have to be a lie,_ a treacherous voice in her head says. _Things might get better._ The voice is a liar.)

She loses track of time, sitting there quietly, occasionally moving her neck or bending her fingers backwards to hear her bones crack against each other. When Pansy opens her eyes again, she uncurls her hands as well, and Daphne can see that her long fingernails have left their mark.

“Oh, Pansy,” she says reproachfully. “Please don't. Not like Greg.” Gregory, who sat around and did nothing during the good times; silently clenched his hands until there were bloody marks on his palms during the bad. He looked lost without Draco, and perhaps he was. Draco had been his leader and Crabbe his friend, through all seven years of their education, and he'd lost both of them within months of each other. He was terrified, Daphne thought, that the Ministry would come for him next.

“It helps, a little,” Pansy says, taking her wand and healing the cuts. “To focus on pain rather than panic, you know?” Daphne's mouth turns down at the corners. There had been frustratingly little information about panic attacks in the library books, and she and Pansy had resorted to things which seemed to be common sense; breathe deeply, try to focus on something else, be positive and refute the negative thoughts that her brain was throwing at her. It was so much easier said than done.

“Please don't,” she said again, helplessly, running her thumbs over the now-healed skin. Pansy shrugs, takes her hands backs and doesn't make any promises. Daphne looks down at the stone floor, anticipating her next words.

“Can't you stay?” Pansy pleads again, just as Daphne had feared. “It doesn't – we don't have to mention the thing in the library if you don't want to, just – you're so strong. We all need you, not just me.”

Daphne considers simply walking out, but tries to meet Pansy's eyes anyway. “You know what they're doing,” she says simply. “I don't want to go to Azkaban.” That’s a lie – Daphne is a coward, the worst kind of coward, and she’s running away to another country to get away from the Ministry. Pansy's eyes fill with tears and she reaches out. 

“Neither do _I_ , but – we have – options,” she says weakly. “Other than going to France.” Daphne just shakes her head, checks the corridor to make sure that it's clear – it is – before climbing out of the passageway and holding out a hand for Pansy to follow.

~*~

“I think the Christmas holidays will be the best time to leave,” Daphne says to Astoria and Pansy on a weekend night, watching the first and second years allow themselves to stay up until the wildly late hour of ten o'clock before rubbing their eyes and heading off to bed or curling up on the sofa. She doesn't know when the Common Room apparently became a big sleepover venue, but nowadays there's always a couple of people sleeping on the sofas with spare blankets and pillows.

“Christmas?” Astoria asks, alarmed. “After the Christmas holidays, right?” Daphne smiles and shakes her head. Pansy looks away, twisting her hands together.

“No, as soon as possible,” Daphne ignores Astoria's small sound of dismay at the answer and continues with her reasoning. “If you and Mother and Father lie, and say that I've been staying with you for the whole two weeks before running off on the last day, and you assumed I'd gone to Hogwarts early or something, with my Apparating license – that'll make them think that I've only been gone for, what, a day by the time the staff alert them.”

“But actually you'll have had two weeks to prepare yourself and get yourself settled in,” Pansy says. “That's really smart.” The three of them ignore the waver in her voice as she admits it. Astoria still looks terribly upset, and Daphne wraps an arm around her thin shoulders, trying to get her to sit straight the way they were always taught at home.

“But – you won't spend Christmas with us,” she says, sounding close to tears. “You can't come Christmas shopping with me and Mother.”

“I'm sorry,” Daphne sighs, wondering against her common sense whether Christmas Eve was too late to stay. “But it's more than just the two weeks. I'll be arriving in France with all the muggle tourists and people visiting their family and students coming home, and in all the mess of so many people, I'll just fit in the crowd,” she says. Astoria nods against her shoulder, her neck tense and shoulder stiff with the effort it’s taking not to cry.

“And maybe some muggle will be feeling the Christmas spirit,” Pansy says half snidely and half sadly. “Maybe they'll take in a seventeen year old girl for the holidays.”

“The downside will be that apartments and hotels will probably be charging premium fee,” Astoria says, sitting up slightly. “Double, maybe even triple of the normal rate. Mum never wanted to go to France in the holidays because of that.” Daphne nods.

“That's too bad, I think,” she says, and Astoria nods and sighs.

“Do you know where you're going?” she asks. “I mean – can you owl us?”

“I don't know,” Daphne says, biting her lip and trying to think it over. “I mean – one of the bigger cities would probably be best, right?”

“I think so,” Pansy says. “It's easier to blend in. Imagine if you went to a small village on the coast or something and everyone was talking about the new girl for months and then that got back to the Ministry somehow?”

“But a small village on the coast would probably be the best bet if I didn't want to run into other witches and wizards, which I don't,” Daphne says, frowning slightly. “A small village on the coast is probably going to be full of muggles, right?”

“Don't count on it,” Astoria says, and Pansy nods in agreement. “I'd say stick to the big cities and try to keep your head down.”

~*~

It's as though every worst fear in every Slytherin house is confirmed when the Ministry announces that they are stopping the use of Dementors as guards in Azkaban. The half of Slytherins who still receive the Daily Prophet in the mornings go a little crazy about it – passing it on, insisting that everyone at the table read it and think of the possible reasons for this particular change. Soon word filters down that the seventh years and second-time seventh years are going to be boycotting first period to discuss the article. The other houses, having received the paper and high-fiving over the apparently good news, all watch the Slytherin table with varying degrees of puzzlement on their faces.

The meeting, in the end, only has around twelve people to attend it, and Daphne bites her lip and tries not to think of their housemates who've gone “missing” or chosen not to return to Hogawarts since the end of last year.

“You know why they'd take the Dementors off guard duty?” Theo asks everyone. His voice is dull and his shoulders slump, and Daphne thinks that this sudden lack of spirit is more frightening than his vibrating, spitting rage.

“For God's sake, Theo, it might be nothing,” Blaise says, and he sounds so angry that everyone can tell it's a cover for his panic.

“Tell me,” one of the seventh years says, his face creased with confusion, leaning forward. “Tell me what it means.”

“It means they're planning to _use_ Azkaban as a prison,” Theo says despondently, staring down at the paper, “and this is their way of placating the purebloods with money and influence.”

“Because they can't complain about inhumane treatment if there are no Dementors,” Pansy says, and she slumps on the sofa, looks as though her body is too heavy to hold up.

“And they can't pull their money out of the Ministry without being accused themselves of bigotry,” Daphne says. Everyone in the Common Room looks scared, now, and Daphne can see the goosebumps on Pansy's arms.

“ _Damn_ the Ministry,” Theo says, raking his fingernails down his face. “Now we'll see whether or not Draco's sent to Azkaban,” he adds, glaring at Daphne. She keeps her eyes on the floor and admits to herself that this is a pretty telling move.

“You might all just be jumping to conclusions,” Astoria says angrily, having decided to skip her first period despite still being a sixth year. “You know that there's been a movement recently to keep Dementors out of Azkaban, and Harry Potter's behind it, so of course the Ministry are going to pull the Dementors!”

“Not this soon,” Theo says. “Not just before Draco's trial's going to wrap up.” Astoria frowns unhappily, mutters something about jumping to conclusions again before giving up and leaning back into the sofa.

Everyone starts to trickle out of the Common Room and back to lessons after that; when Daphne looks at the clock on her way out, she can hardly believe that only fifteen minutes have passed.

~*~

“Those fucking snakes,” Pansy greets Daphne at the breakfast table. The plate in front of her is empty, and Daphne surreptitiously sneaks a bit of buttered toast onto it.

“Who?”

“Malfoys,” Astoria says, handing Daphne the Daily Prophet. Daphne frowns, reads the headlines.

 _MORE DEATH EATERS TO BE PUT IN AZKABAN_ , the article screams, and goes on to say how that, with the help of Lucius Malfoy, Voldemort's Death Eaters were being tracked down and forced out of hiding and put into prison.

“No trial?” Daphne asks.

“The Dark Mark is all the trial they need, apparently,” Pansy says bitterly. Daphne looks at the list of names that are being gleefully presented to her by the paper and stops short at the fourth one on the list. _Teodorus Nott_.

“Oh, no, Theo,” she says, looking around the table – Theo's nowhere to be seen.

“The Malfoys seem to be weaselling their way out of Azkaban just fine,” Pansy says with a roll of her eyes, taking a small bite out of the bread that Daphne had put on her plate. “By turning their backs on everyone else, that is. I thought Nott and Malfoy were friends!”

“Apparently not,” Astoria says sadly, and then looks up. “Oh, I just made a joke, didn't I?”

“Well then,” Pansy says. “What now?”

“I don't know,” Daphne says. Astoria perks up immediately.

“Oh, but this might mean you don't have to go!” she exclaims, and puts a hand over her mouth, looking both ways to see whether anybody might have heard her outburst.

“Draco's still on trial, remember?” Daphne asks. “Cross-referencing or whatever. Apparently everyone wants to be a witness.”

“Well, yes,” Astoria says, wilting slightly, “but, I mean, this is good, isn't it?”

“Only for the Malfoys,” Pansy snorts.

“But Mr Malfoy probably did some sort of deal with the Ministry, right?” Astoria asks. “I mean, there's no way that he would help the Ministry without getting some sort of deal for Draco.”

“Yeah, but it’s probably just for Draco,” Daphne says, studying the paper harder, hoping for some sort of quote that might help her see what the Ministry had planned. “Maybe from a life sentence down to ten years, or something.”

“Ten years is a long time,” Astoria says quietly, looking at Daphne, and Daphne puts an arm around her shoulders, regretting ever entering into this conversation.

“A life sentence is even longer,” Pansy says angrily, “and Unforgivables put you in Azkaban for life. We learnt that back in fourth year.” She looks around the table, takes another bite of bread. “How many of us performed Unforgivables, do you know?”

“Everyone, I should think,” Astoria says. “They taught everyone Unforgivables.”

“D’you think any of the other houses are going to get their students stuck in Azkaban for life?” Pansy asks dully, finishing her bread. Daphne puts another slice on her plate.

“Of course not,” Astoria says. Her voice is a mixture of sadness and anger.

“Of course not,” Daphne agrees, allowing her anger to get the better of her for once. “The _other_ houses were _under duress_. We took to the spells gleefully, probably on our first try, with a mad psycho happy gleam in our eyes –”

“Stop, Daphne, please, stop,” Pansy begs. Daphne closes her mouth and clenches her jaw, pushing the anger down, and that marks the end of their conversation.

~*~

When Daphne reaches the stone monument, the first thing she notices is that someone's taken away Millicent's snapped wand, or maybe it's just blown away; the second thing she notices is that the dirt at the base of the smooth grey stone, while well-trodden, is bare of any wands, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

She didn't really think Theo was going to leave his wand on the memorial, she reasons with herself as she walks back up to the castle. He probably didn't even know about Millicent. She'd just wanted to make sure, that was all.

~*~

As imperfect as it is, Daphne's made a family out of her housemates, she thinks, and on quiet nights when the fire is crackling green in the grate, letting out small silver sparks, she'll just sit in a corner of the common room, watching everybody else as they go about their work.

“Can you leave this?” Pansy asks, once, a week or so before term lets out, and her eyes are full of challenge as she sweeps an arm behind her to indicate all the other Slytherins in the room. “Will you leave _them_?” Both of them ignore the way that they're leaning ever so slightly into each other, or the ways that their hands are not-quite-but-almost touching.

Daphne casts her eyes over the room; the reality of doing a thing is so often different to the daydream of doing it, but – “Yes,” she says. It will be the most selfish thing that she has ever done, leaving all these people behind for her own safety, she thinks, but, “I think I can. I think I will.”

Pansy’s mouth twists downwards, a little, but when she sighs there’s a resigned tone to it, as though this was no more than she expected. “I don’t know how you’re going to do it,” she says softly.

“Me neither,” Daphne says, watching a particularly accident-prone third year nearly fall into the fire with their eagerness to be close to the heat source. She watches as one of the sixth-years leans forward, offering a hand to help them up, and returns the shy smile that they give to her.

She is the worst kind of coward.

~*~

Pansy finds Daphne in one of the abandoned classrooms in the Astronomy Tower the night before term lets out; they stand near each other for a while before Pansy comes closer to wrap her arms around Daphne, who doesn’t resist. They’re so close to one another, and Daphne’s traitorous heart speeds up, _thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump_ , an excited beat.

It would be so easy, Daphne thinks, to just lean forward and turn her head ever so slightly –

“You said we shouldn’t,” Pansy says. Her eyes are on Daphne’s lips.

“And we shouldn’t,” Daphne agrees. “If we start anything now it’ll become unhealthy and codependent so easily…”

She wishes. Could wishes change this? Pansy takes one of her arms from around Daphne and hooks her fingers under Daphne’s jaw. Neither of them can move, and Daphne heart is still beating out an irregular rhythm against her skin. The sound of the wind outside the tower seems louder than ever.

“Then stay,” Pansy says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “Help me. Let me help you.”

Daphne rests her chin on Pansy’s shoulder for an instant before pulling away. “You know I can’t do that,” she says.

“Can’t, or won’t?” Pansy asks, but she doesn’t seem surprised. “You’re leaving tomorrow night.” It’s such a strange thought, and Daphne can’t really get her head around it; in twenty-four hours from now, she will be in a broomstick, flying across the Channel. Pansy’s question isn’t really a question, but Daphne answers it anyway

“Both,” she says softly. The word drops into the room, rolls along the floor, leaves silence in its wake. “I’m sorry,” Daphne says just as quietly, but it’s not enough.

“I know,” Pansy says, and leans forward for another hug. Daphne relaxes into her after a moment. “I might come to see you off.”

“Only if you can get away without your mum asking questions,” Daphne replies. Pansy nods, and Daphne’s fingers twitch because she wants to smooth out the crease between her friend’s eyebrows.

“Good luck,” Pansy says gently. “If I don’t make it. Good luck.”

“You too,” Daphne says. “You’re probably going need it more than me.” Pansy smiles a little.

“Maybe,” she admits, and moves away. Daphne almost shivers at the sudden gap between them. “Are you coming?”

“Maybe later,” Daphne says. Pansy leaves with a soft smile in her direction and Daphne slides down against the wall behind her, digging her hands into her already-thin hair, her forehead scraping almost painfully against the material of her robes.

She thinks of Blaise, smiling his large dopey smile and telling her that she’s the strongest; Theo, who looks to the worst of the situation and then looks at her for reassurance; she thinks of all the Slytherins that she’s going to leave for the Wizengamot and the Ministry, and she thinks that she might be the most spectacularly selfish person in her life.


	3. Chapter 3

_broken, broken_

“Do it _face to face_ ,” Pansy says, clearly hoping that this task will be too much and Daphne will cave in and stay with them.

“They deserve to know,” Astoria says in a far more reasonable tone. “If you’re leaving them, they deserve to be told.”

“I thought we agreed that the less people knew, the better,” Daphne grumbles, unwilling to leave the warmth of her armchair and the fire, and, yes, unwilling to face the boys on this matter.

“That was other houses and adults,” Pansy says dismissively. “We’re _Slytherins_ , we know how to keep a secret. Lots of secrets.”

“This is my livelihood,” Daphne tells them. “If the Ministry decides to screw the rules and use Veritaserum on them to find out where I am, I’m screwed.”

“If the Ministry decides to screw the rules, me and Mum will be the first person that they interrogate,” Astoria points out, far too sensibly. “Telling two more people isn’t going to make that much of a difference.”

“You never know,” Daphne mutters sulkily into the collar of her robes, but that’s possibly the weakest argument that she’s ever come up with, and judging from Pansy’s smirk they know it.

“Besides,” Pansy says in a supremely unhelpful fashion, “it’s not like you’re going to be telling them your exact address. Even telling them ‘Paris’ leaves the Ministry with, what, an entire city of Muggles? And they have to comb through the lot without using magic.”

“Or just grossly abusing their power over the Obliviators.”

“That too,” Pansy says somewhat sadly, and shivers.

“This conversation got off topic,” Daphne says, and then regrets pointing it out.

“Yes it has,” Astoria agrees, “and that topic was that you were going to go tell the boys that you’re leaving.”

“Shout it to the whole common room, why don’t you?” Daphne says. Astoria rolls her eyes and Pansy pokes her, and Daphne tries and fails to catch the finger. “Fine, fine, I’m leaving. Plan a funeral. Theo’s going to kill me.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Astoria says comfortingly, patting Daphne’s hand.

The staircase leading down into the Seventh Year boys’ dorms has always been a point to complain about, but now they don’t seem to go on for quite long enough, and Daphne is facing the solid wooden door too soon for her liking. When she knocks, the sound echoes sadly.

“Come in,” Theo says. He’s tossing what looks like a Remembrall around the room, letting it bounce around the walls before summoning it back to him, but ceases his throwing to squint at her as she walks in. “What’s wrong with you? You never knock. For that matter, you never use that door, either. You and the other girls always use the passage between the girls’ and boys’ rooms.”

“Well, I was up in the Common Room and didn’t feel like going down to my dorm just to use the least secret secret passage ever to get here,” Daphne protests.

“What do you want, anyway?” Blaise asks. “You’re welcome to stay down here as long as you want, by the way, I hate the noise that Remembrall makes crashing around the room and Theo doesn’t do it around you or Pansy.” Theo chucks the Remembrall at Blaise for this impertinent comment, and Blaise pulls his curtains across with a yelp.

“I have to tell you guys a thing,” Daphne says nervously.

“Are you shacking up with a Gryffindor? Are you pregnant?” Blaise asks immediately, pulling the curtain aside again.

“Is Draco’s trial over?” Theo asks more sensibly.

“No, no, and no,” Daphne says. “Blaise, I’m sort of alarmed that you went there,” she adds, glancing over at his bed. He shrugs shamelessly at her.

“So what is it then?” Theo asks impatiently, shifting his gaze from the ceiling to her. Daphne changes her stance nervously, takes a breath, and tries to say it as clearly as possible.

“I’m leaving,” she says in a voice that had, utterly without her permission, reverted back to the pureblood formality she’d had instilled in her since she was a child. “I don’t want to be sent to Azkaban,” she continues, not making eye contact, staring at the Slytherin crest above Theo’s bed. She takes another deep breath and lets it out, imagining her emotion being expelled from her body and leaving her a blank, emotionless slate. It works, which is a little scary but for which she’s very grateful.

“You’re joking,” Theo says flatly. He’s always the one staring at ceilings, but now he’s sitting up, trying to make eye contact, trying to make her tell him that it was a bad joke, trying to get her to take it back.

“You _have_ to be joking,” Blaise agrees. Daphne looks away from their faces – one disbelieving, the other clearly desperate – and curses Pansy and Astoria, because it was their idea all along for her to tell the boys that she’s leaving them.

“No jokes,” she promises. None of them have been in the mood for jokes for a long time, and even if she was in the mood now, this would be a joke in supremely bad taste. “My mum’s French. I speak it. I’m going there.”

“Don’t tell me any more,” Theo orders, and turns away. Daphne can’t fight the sinking feeling that he’s angry with her, but he has every right to be.

“Tell me everything,” Blaise says, ignoring the glare that Theo sends his way. “Where are you going to be living?”

“On the streets,” Daphne says. It’s almost a joke. 

“Blaise, what if the Ministry comes after her and demands to know where she is?” Theo demands, and it’s vaguely comforting that his line of thought follows hers so precisely. “What if they shove Veritaserum down your throat? How would you feel knowing you gave her away?”

“Fine, okay, don’t tell me,” Blaise says, folding his arms and scowling at Theo’s argument. “I expect some fucking owls from you, Daphne Nikephoros Greengrass.” 

“Can owls even fly across the Channel?” Theo asks. “Don’t drown owls, Daph.”

“Drown _all the owls_ if it means getting letters to us,” Blaise declares, more animated than he’s been in a long time. Theo rolls his eyes. Blaise has been so much better, these past few weeks, the promise of going home and, in his words, “getting out of this hellhole,” helping him to stop brewing and consuming his homemade concoctions. Daphne doesn’t want to think that her leaving will affect that, and he seems so fine with it now, but – no, that’s where her train of thought gets cut off.

~*~

She’s trapped at home. The windows refuse to unlock, the doors don’t open. Daphne searches through the house, but she is the only one inside. She can’t think where Astoria and Mother and Father can be. There is nobody in the house to see her, nobody to hear her, nobody to touch or talk to. She thinks that she’s been here for days.

The house begins to shrink around her, until the roof is forcing her head down and the walls are pinning her arms to her sides.

There is nobody in the house to hear her screaming.

“Daphne!” Pansy’s voice says, and she wakes up with a start, sweating through her nightdress, her throat sore.

~*~

For better or for worse, Daphne has been noticed, most of the time, when she walks into a room. When she was younger, cooped up in the large house she was supposed to call home, her parents would always turn to face her when she walked into the room; her sister would acknowledge her presence; at Hogwarts, her housemates had always nodded at her, and in the last year especially, she couldn’t walk into a room without a thousand faces flinching away from her, and as awful as that was, she’d gotten used to it.

Now – now, she’s under the strongest Disillusionment Charm that she’s ever cast, standing at the back of the busy Hogsmeade station and there are no words for how _unsettling_ it feels; to be standing here, and to have nobody notice her, hear her, nobody even glance her way. It was her goal all along to not be seen at all getting onto the train, of course it was, but she wasn’t sure that anyone or anything could have prepared her for how awful and spine-chillingly-creepy it feels to be so thoroughly ignored by everybody in sight.

Wading through the crowd is an even more surreal experience; being bumped and hit and having trunks dropped on her toe, moving quickly, having people look _through_ her to apologise to the person that they assume they bumped –

“I _never_ want to be invisible again,” Daphne says forcefully once she’s sat down in the Slytherin compartment where she can’t be seen from the outside from any angle, with Theo looking disinterestedly out of the window and Blaise drawing absent patterns on the table. He likes painting, Daphne remembers suddenly, and wonders how long it’s been since she’s seen him with a paintbrush and canvas. Far too long.

“Oh?” Theo asks, voice cutting. “Being bumped is too much for you?”

Daphne opens her mouth and has to take a moment to wonder how she can express the bone-deep fear, the first time she’s felt anything so strongly this year, that comes with being so disregarded, and in the end settles for a weak-joking response of, “Yeah, you know how fragile I am.” Blaise snorts at that, and Theo does too, and then Astoria, bless her, slides into the compartment at the perfect time.

“Daphne?” she asks anxiously, eyes darting around the cabin, and it’s alarming to see the way worry seeps out of her body and features at the sight of Daphne curled up in the corner of the compartment.

“Here,” Daphne says slightly unnecessarily, opening her arms, and Astoria walks into them without a second thought. Her blonde hair is thin and a little tangled when Daphne runs a hand through it.

When Astoria pulls away, Daphne holds her for a moment, looking at her closely like she should have been looking all along, and it’s so, so scary; Astoria looks – well, haunted is the best word for it, Daphne thinks. Her eyes are the worst; the once-vivid blue flat and pale and looking like glass ready to shatter at any moment. There are bags under her eyes and lines carved into her face which weren’t there before, and her lips are chapped from being bitten.

“What is it?” Astoria asks, pulling her arms away, but that only makes it worse because her hands slide into Daphne’s, and Astoria’s fingertips are cold.

“I’m sorry,” Daphne murmurs. “I should be looking after you. Look at you –” She reaches up to touch her little sister’s face, and oh, when did that little sister grow up so quickly? “You need to take care of yourself. Have you been sleeping?”

“I will once we’re at home,” Astoria says, dodging the question smoothly. “Holidays.”

“And you need to stop biting your lips, and put on some gloves,” Daphne orders. Astoria smiles a little at this, the corner of her mouth curling upwards.

“Fucking _holidays_ ,” Blaise repeats almost reverently, looking up from the table. His eyes are bright and his hands tremble a little with the pent-up energy his brews often leave him with. “I might pull a Daphne and just not come back. See how long it takes for the Ministry to come knocking.”

“That does not sound like a smart plan,” Theo says into the window, where he’s still looking out at a stubbornly stationary landscape.

“Shh,” Astoria says, looking outside to see if there was anyone outside the compartment.

“Relax,” Blaise said. “We’ve put Silencing charms on the door.”

“That seems smart,” Astoria retorts. “Now if a bunch of Gryffindors come to pick a fight nobody’s going to hear.”

“We’ll remove the Silencing charms in that case,” Theo says. “Maybe even cast an Amplifying charm while we’re at it.”

“Let their loud declarations of war echo through the train and be accused of picking fights,” Daphne says from her corner where she’s found a vaguely secure perch on the luggage. “That seems even smarter.”

“This is the compartment of smart people,” Blaise says solemnly.

“Not without Pansy,” Daphne says. “Where is Pansy?” She and Astoria exchange a look – surely nobody would corner Pansy, not now, not just before the train was going to depart – 

“Sorry I’m late,” Pansy says tiredly, sliding into the cabin with timing as perfect as Astoria’s had been. Goyle slides in after her, sitting down without a word next to Blaise, and Daphne feels a sudden twist of regret that none of them thought to worry about him. Weren’t Slytherins supposed to take care of their own?

“Oh, you had us worried,” Astoria says, sounding motherly and reproving for all that she’s two years younger than Pansy. “What kept you?” There were a series of implied concerns underneath the spoken question: _did someone corner you? Are you hurt? Was it another panic attack?_

“I’m fine,” Pansy says, dumping her trunk in the corner and sliding along the luggage rack to sit next to Daphne; against her better judgement, Daphne links their hands together and Pansy takes this as an invitation to rest her head against Daphne’s shoulder. “Went back for my hairbrush, and then couldn’t find it. Then found Greg.”

“Where was it?” Blaise asks. “The hairbrush.” It’s obvious that he isn’t that interested, that he’s just trying to keep the conversation going.

“Under the bed,” Pansy mutters.

There is a brief, awkward silence in the cabin. There are only six people in the compartment, and Daphne doesn’t know whether she’s ever felt absences so keenly.

“So,” Blaise says, cutting through the quiet, “holidays, eh? Will any of you be going anywhere? Apart from Daph, obviously.”

“Why, where’s Daphne going?” Greg asks rather cluelessly.

“France,” Theo says shortly, and Daphne can imagine the end to that sentence. _Because she’s a coward._ Astoria scowls at him darkly, and Daphne reaches out to squeeze her hand and mouth _it’s okay_. She doesn’t mind Greg knowing, since every other eighth-year Slytherin knows anyway.

“Oh, for how long?”

“As long as she needs to,” Astoria answers sharply, still glaring at Theo, and the suffocating silence returns to smother the compartment.

“Oh – _oh_ ,” Greg says, understanding dawning on his face. He stuffs his hands into his pocket awkwardly. “Well, I won’t tell,” he says. “Slytherins protect their own.” Daphne wonders how true that is anymore, but gives him a weak smile in any case.

“They’re saying that Draco’s trial’s going to finish soon,” Blaise says, but the words fall flat and Daphne starts to wonder if there is anything that they can do to dissipate this cold and awful silence.

“They’ve been saying that for months now,” Theo says coldly, still looking out of the window at the same landscape he’s been staring at for the past five minutes. “If he gets out of Azkaban it’ll only be because he threw the rest of us under the bus.”

“When are you leaving?” Pansy whispers as the others start to carry a tenuous conversation, albeit rehashing a debate that they’ve gone through many times before.

“Tonight, you know that –”

“No, I meant, what time are you leaving? I want to see you off.” She’s pale but determined, and Daphne’s mind suddenly decides to focus on their joined hands.

“I don’t know,” Daphne says. “After dark. After everyone’s asleep.”

“Make it midnight,” Pansy says. “I can head over to your place at midnight.”

“Are you sure?” Daphne asks, thinking of Pansy’s mother, the stately lady she’s seen only once but who looks the type to stay up and worry.

“Yeah,” Pansy says quietly, “Mum’s kind of been a wreck lately. Like mother, like daughter, yeah?” she asks, trying to smile, and Daphne can’t help but snort at that.

~*~

Even on the busy station, people manage to find ways to avoid contact with Astoria, as though touching a Slytherin child will be enough to turn them into a criminal. It’s something of a blessing, the way that they all shy away from Astoria, because it means that Daphne, now under another Disillusionment Charm, can follow her sister across the station without arousing much suspicion. Still, she hates it with a passion; the way that their eyes slide through her, the way that she’s not a blip on anybody’s radar. She hates the way that nobody even registers her presence.

“Daphne, for Merlin’s sake, put your hand on my shoulder,” Astoria mutters over her shoulder, and manages to make her whisper sound angry. Daphne places her hand on her sister’s shoulder, and it’s a shock, to feel how tense her sister is. At her touch, though, Astoria relaxes a little, starts moving more purposefully.

Mother is waiting towards the back of the platform, but the moment that Daphne sees her it’s obvious that something’s wrong. Her mouth is turned down at the corners and there are exhausted wrinkles on her forehead as she scans Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. There’s a circle of empty space pressing down on her, larger than the one around Astoria, and the skin covering her hands is dry and red. She’s hidden it well, but her fingers tremble against each other.

“Something’s wrong,” Astoria whispers, trying to move her mouth as little as possible. Her shoulder goes tense under Daphne’s hand, and Daphne presses down, tries to remind her sister without words that they’re in public.

“I know,” Daphne whispers after a beat of silence. Mother is a quiet warrior; she never looks anything less than perfectly put-together. Seeing her with cracks in her usually flawless armour is terrifying.

“Astoria,” Mother says as they draw closer to her. “Daphne?”

“Here,” Daphne says, reaching forward to reach Mother’s outstretched hand. Mother’s eyes focus on what Daphne assumes to be her blurry edges, and it’s feels like such a ridiculously large relief, to have someone _see_ her.

“What’s wrong?” Astoria asks, cutting straight to the point, and Mother’s lips turn up a little.

“I’ll tell you when we get home,” she says, tucking Astoria’s hand under her arm and surreptitiously reaching for Daphne’s.

There’s a _pop_ , the familiar sickening feeling of Apparition; and then Daphne is stumbling into her kitchen, spreading her hands on the table in an attempt to regain her balance. Mother taps her sharply on the head, and Daphne can feel herself melt back into existence.

“Are you okay?” Astoria asks anxiously, and Daphne just nods, wonders why Apparition has become such a nightmare all of a sudden, trying not to look around and see the walls that crushed her in her dreams. She can’t see Astoria, but she imagines that her sister is not convinced by her shaky nod; still, Astoria turns to Mother. “What’s wrong?”

“A few things,” Mother says, forcing her tone to stay light, sitting down at the kitchen table. “The Malfoys are selling their Manor.”

“ _Really_?” Astoria asks incredulously, and she and Daphne have to sit down at the enormity of this.

For as long as they can remember, Malfoy Manor has been the grand home of the Malfoy family, lived in for centuries – but, more relevant to them, Malfoy Manor is the place where they spent so much time as children, when the parents needed to discuss important things or decided that the little ones needed to socialise. Malfoy Manor was the place of endless childhood memories: exploring the house; mapping out the corridors like daring explorers; playing dress-up with the old clothes they found in immaculate but clearly abandoned rooms; laughing as they chased the peacocks around the grand gardens. Narcissa had sat Astoria and Daphne on her lap and told them to call her ‘Auntie’, taught them vague Latin phrases that had no practical application in real life, most of which Daphne still remembered – _Dives aut iniquus est aut iniqui heres. Corvus oculum corvi non eruit. Pecunia imperium est._

For as long as they can remember, Malfoy Manor has been the unofficial meeting place of the pureblood society circle, and then for the majority of last year it was promoted to become the official meeting palce.

“Why?” Astoria asks, and she’s tensed up again, shoulders shaking slightly with the effort to stay still. _Radix malorum est cupidatus_ , Daphne thinks, remembers Narcissa’s long white-blond hair and her quick hands, her pretty laugh as Daphne stumbled through the words with an accent too terrible to take seriously.

“The Ministry decided to charge the Malfoys for the trial they’re holding,” Mother says. “The sum they demanded required the selling of their house.” Astoria’s eyes are wide with indignation, but Mother holds her hand up. “The second thing is that Father has been taken into holding.”

“ _What_?” Astoria bursts out. Her fists are clenched so tightly that her skin looks white and bloodless.

“Why?” Daphne asks, ignoring her feelings. It makes her feel messy and dishonest, but she pushes it all down until she can’t feel it.

“He was found with a book on Muggle registration and monitoring procedures. They assumed it was for nefarious purposes,” Mother says, and she looks so tired. It is frightening.

“Why did he have a book on Muggle registration and monitoring processes?” Daphne asks. Her voice is cool and detached and Mother sends her a look that might be approving.

“That brings me to my third point,” she says. “I found my family in France. They’re taking you in until you find your feet.” Daphne raises her eyebrows.

“You found your family? I didn’t think you had family in France,” she says, suspicious. Mother looks both ways.

“Yes, well,” Mother says, sliding a piece of parchment across the table. It has an address written on it in neat cursive writing. Daphne looks at it for a second and then folds it precisely into two, places it in her pocket.

“That’s very convenient timing,” she says, carefully keeping her voice neutral enough that this can be taken as a statement rather than a question it is. Mother just gives her a look which means that the conversation is at an end.

“ _Dad_ ,” Astoria says, looking at the two of them with something like horror in her eyes. “ _Father_. Remember him? In _holding_?” Her entire body is tense, muscles taut and body stiff, reverted back to the perfect position that has been drilled into her since childhood. “ _Why_?”

“Please, calm down, Astoria,” Mother says. “I will get to that in due time.” Astoria subsides, folding her arms so tightly Daphne thinks the bones might crack. “Oh,” Mother says, still addressing Daphne, avoiding the eyes of her youngest daughter. She slides a few foreign-looking papers and a little dark green book across the table. “He managed to use the book to get these for you.”

Daphne takes them and inspects them. There is a frankly horrifying picture of her on the first page, along with a series of lines in an official-looking font which claim that her name is _Daphné Herbeverte_ , that her birthday is on the fourteenth of May (it’s on the first of February), and that she comes from France.

“Where did he get them?” Astoria asks, and her voice is rising in pitch until it’s almost hysterical. “Mother, _where did he get them_?” 

“He used the book to conjure them up, and sent them to me. He was arrested soon after for possession of his book,” Mother says and her face is still tired but perfectly composed. 

Astoria lets out a scream muffled by her hands and leaves the table abruptly, the scraping of her chair on the floor causing Daphne to flinch. She knows that it’s illegal to put someone in Azkaban for possession of something as harmless as a book without proof that they were planning to use it for nefarious purposes, but – Father was known to be a supporter of Voldemort. That will probably be enough for the court, if his case even progresses to a hearing.

She feels ill.

Mother stands up as well, brushes non-existent dust off her skirt, and walks into the kitchen. Daphne can hear her ordering dinner, but she doesn’t register any of the words. She’s still sitting, motionless, at the table when Mother comes out of the kitchen.

“The book was for me,” Daphne says, and this time it isn’t a question at all. “He was arrested because of me.”

“Yes,” Mother says, “and he would want you to put that sacrifice to good use and leave on schedule, Daphne.”

“It’s my fault,” Daphne says.

“Yes,” Mother replies. Her tone is unrelenting, and Daphne wonders whether it’s possible for a mother to stop loving her daughter.

“You didn’t find your family in France,” Daphne says.

“No,” Mother agrees, "That's the address of a small bank where I have an account. Use that as a starting place."

~*~

Night, when it finally comes, is overcast and cloudy, leading to an even darker landscape than Daphne had expected. Dark clouds cover the moon, and Daphne thinks that it’s suitable that even the moon is hiding its face from this escape; even the moon wants plausible deniability.

It’s something of a blessing, because the darkness and cloud cover means that there is less chance of Daphne being seen, but she can’t bring herself to be thankful about it.

“Use magic if you must, but try to find a different way of channelling it,” Mother says. She’s been keeping up a stream of whispered advice throughout most of the evening, with facts coming faster and more urgently as the time to depart grows nearer. “Wandless magic would be ideal, but you can channel magic through simple sticks as well. They don’t work as well without a magical component, but –”

“I thought they took the Trace off me,” Daphne says. He voice is sharp and vaguely alarmed. “And if I’m in a different country –”

“I’m _sure_ that they can find a way to put the trace back on you if they wanted to, which is why magic is _so dangerous_ ,” Mother hisses. Daphne can’t see her face in the darkness.

“Then why wouldn’t they put the trace on Harry Potter, when the Ministry was under – under His control?” Astoria asks. Her arms feel cold through the fabric of Daphne’s clothes.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Mother says. “Just try not to use magic, and if you do have to use magic then make sure you set up spells which repeat themselves as necessary, to minimise your spellcasting. When’s your friend coming?”

“She said she’s be here at midnight,” Daphne says, and she hates the way her voice is small when she talks about Pansy, as fragile as a thread in a spider’s web.

“You need to hurry,” Mother says. Judging from the movement of her head, she’s checking her watch, a useless task in the dark room. “And you have to come back if you Splinch yourself. I don’t care how much it hurts, you have to come _back_ – the Ministry can’t find you floating in the Channel, do you hear me, Daphne?”

“I hear you,” Daphne says quietly, knowing it would be foolish to mention that Mother has said this several times before over the course of the evening.

Next to her, Astoria is so tightly wound that it’s scaring Daphne. She can feel the undercurrent of anxiety humming just below her sister’s skin like a living creature, ready to burst out at any moment. Astoria’s small, cold fingers clench and release, and clench and release, too anxious to form words, and Daphne just watches her uneasily.

“Don’t fly with wet hair,” Mother says. “You’ll catch a head cold and there’s no Madam Pomfrey in France –”

“I _know_ , you’ve _said_ this all before,” Daphne snaps, and can’t bring herself to regret her sharp tone.

Astoria bounces on the bed a little, and the springs creak alarmingly. She stops.

Daphne had never realised how loud simple breathing was until she found herself sitting on the bed in a dark room with her mother and her sister and none of them could find the words to talk.

When Pansy Apparates in, it’s with a tiny popping noise that Daphne probably wouldn’t have noticed were it not for the fact that the room is otherwise deathly silent.

“You have good Apparition technique,” Mother says approvingly, offering Pansy a steadying hand. Pansy ignores it and launches herself at Daphne, and they wrap their arms around each other. Daphne can feel the bones in her spine.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she says. “Mum went to bed a little later than usual.”

“She doesn’t know you’re here, though?” Astoria asks.

“No,” Pansy says, looking down. 

“Alright, well,” Mother says, and the reluctance in her voice is obvious. “Daphne, we don’t have all night.”

Daphne wants to tell them she’s changed her mind. She wants to stay, she wants to leave, she wants to be _safe_. She stands and hugs first Mother, then Astoria, then Pansy.

“I love you,” she says in a tremulous voice, not addressing the statement to any one of the three.

Then she turns on one foot and feels the awful sensation of Apparition envelop her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Dives aut iniquus est aut iniqui heres_ means "nobody gets rich quickly if he is honest"  
>  _Corvus oculum corvi non eruit_ means "a crow will not take out the eye of another crow"  
>  _Pecunia imperium est_ means "money is power"  
>  _Radix malorum est cupidatus_ means "desire is the root of evil"

**Author's Note:**

>  _rapelles-tu ton français?_ \- do you remember your french?


End file.
